Saturday, January 9, 2021

Patriot Act 2, Censorship, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix



Patriot Act 2.0 will be rolled out with a lot of mindless bleating about white supremacists and fighting fascism, and the actual policies and laws put into place will have virtually nothing to do with any of those things.

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POLL: 89% do not have much trust in election integrity in U.S.

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In the wake of the 2020 election controversies, 89% say they do not have much trust in election integrity in the U.S. That's according to a recent unscientific poll of more than 640 people at SharylAttkisson.com. When asked if they generally trust election integrity, 70% said "Absolutely no" and 19% said "More no than yes" […]

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BREAKING: Parler CEO Responds to Amazon Hosting Ban — Says It’s a ‘Coordinated Attack By Tech Giants to Kill Competition’

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Parler CEO John Matze has responded to Amazon kicking the platform off their hosting services, calling it a “coordinated attack.”

On Saturday, Amazon kicked Parler off their webhosting service, meaning the platform will be offline until they find a new host.

The ban goes into effect on Sunday, effectively shutting down the platform that conservatives have flocked to since the big tech giants began banning conservatives.

In a post on Parler, Matze wrote that “Sunday (tomorrow) at midnight Amazon will be shutting off all of our servers in an attempt to completely remove free speech off the internet. There is the possibility Parler will be unavailable on the internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch. We prepared for events like this by never relying on amazons proprietary infrastructure and building bare metal products.”

“We will try our best to move to a new provider right now as we have many competing for our business, however Amazon, Google and Apple purposefully did this as a coordinated effort knowing our options would be limited and knowing this would inflict the most damage right as President Trump was banned from the tech companies,” the statement continued.

Matze concluded that “this was a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the market place. We were too successful too fast. You can expect the war on competition and free speech to continue, but don’t count us out.”

Parler has faced what can only be described as a mass coordinated cyber attack by Big Tech, first being banned by Apple and Google within a 24 hour time period.

Amazon’s employees had been lobbying for the platform to be booted so that they could further silence their political adversaries.

In an email obtained by BuzzFeed News, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Trust and Safety team told Parler Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff that “the calls for violence propagating across Parler violated its terms of service and that Amazon is unconvinced that the service’s plan to use volunteers to moderate such things will be effective.”

Of course, they did no such bans when Black Lives Matter was planning riots across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Tik Tok last year.

“Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms. It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service,” the email reads. “[W]e cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others,” the email reads. “Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend Parler’s account effective Sunday, January 10th, at 11:59PM PST.”

In a post on Parler about Apple’s decision to ban them from the app store earlier in the day, CEO John Matze wrote, “Apple will be banning Parler until we give up free speech, institute broad and invasive policies like Twitter and Facebook and we become a surveillance platform by pursuing guilt of those who use Parler before innocence.”

“They claim it is due to violence on the platform. The community disagrees as we hit number 1 on their store today. The same day ‘Hang Mike Pence’, a disgusting violent suggestion, was trending nationally on Twitter. Displaying the horrible double standard Apple and their big tech pack apply to the community,” the statement contined. “Apple, a software monopoly, provides no alternatives to installing apps on your phone other then their store. We do not own our phones, Apple simply rents them to us. Apple, Google and the rest of the anti-competitive pack of big tech tyrants coordinate their moves and work together to stifle competition in the marketplace.”

“More details about our next plans coming soon as we have many options,” Matze concluded.

The ban goes into effect on Sunday, January 10th, at 11:59PM PST. 

Big tech has also been banning Trump supporters and allies at a record pace. They want you silenced.

The post BREAKING: Parler CEO Responds to Amazon Hosting Ban — Says It’s a ‘Coordinated Attack By Tech Giants to Kill Competition’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.



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NEW VIDEO: Antifa Hands Out Weapons from Bag During Storming of US Capitol

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A new video was released that shows Antifa terrorists handing out weapons to their comrades during the storming of the US Capitol.

Clear evidence. SHARE THIS VIDEO!

— Donald J. Trump Team Trumpsec Saturday, January 9, 2021

This should come as no surprise for Gateway Pundit readers. As we reported earlier today Antifa organized a rally near the US Capitol on Wednesday.

On Friday investigative journalist Millie Weaver ran into Antifa activist and protest leader John Sullivan in Washington DC.

She overheard him say he was not being charged.

Just ran into John Sullivan the suspected BLM activist that was amongst the protesters that stormed the Capitol and was arrested yesterday. He appears to have been released!

In a phone call he can be heard saying that “no he’s not being charged”. pic.twitter.com/ZM11JpYk3J

— Millie Weaver 🇺🇸 (@Millie__Weaver) January 9, 2021

How many of his Antifa buddies were with him?

Notice he organized BLM/Antifa to storm the Capitol on the 6th later then “catch and released” pic.twitter.com/0MvK8AdIiY

— Millie Weaver 🇺🇸 (@Millie__Weaver) January 9, 2021

John Sullivan tweeted about BLM buses in DC during the “Stop the Steal” rally.

So BLM sent in busses of radicals for the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally?
This is all starting to come together now

 

The post NEW VIDEO: Antifa Hands Out Weapons from Bag During Storming of US Capitol appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.



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Parler Faces Extinction As Amazon Employees Demand Company Stop Hosting

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Parler Faces Extinction As Amazon Employees Demand Company Stop Hosting

A coalition of Amazon corporate employees have demanded that the Seattle-based megacorp kick Parler off the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform unless 'posts inciting violence' are removed, which would force the Trump-friendly Twitter competitor to find another host.

According to CNBC, an employee advocacy group - Amazon Employees for Climate Justice - said in a Saturday tweet that AWS should "deny Parler services until it removes posts inciting violence, including at the Presidential inauguration."

Enough is enough. Amazon hosts Parler on @awscloud.

As Amazon workers, we demand Amazon deny Parler services until it removes posts inciting violence, including at the Presidential inauguration.

We cannot be complicit in more bloodshed and violent attacks on our democracy.

— Amazon Employees For Climate Justice (@AMZNforClimate) January 9, 2021

More via CNBC:

Pressure has been mounting for Amazon to stop hosting Parler on AWS after other tech giants took action against the social media app in the wake of the deadly U.S. Capitol riot earlier this week. Google on Friday removed Parler from its app store for Android users, Google Play Store. BuzzFeed News reported on Friday that Apple has threatened to pull Parler from its App Store.

Parler, which launched in 2018, has emerged as a popular platform for President Trump’s allies in the last year by billing itself as a free speech alternative to mainstream social media services like Twitter and Facebook. -CNBC

To justify censoring Parler, critics have pointed to posts calling for 'firing squads' - like one from attorney Lin Wood (who some say handed the Senate to the Democrats by openly calling for Georgians not to vote in the runoff election unless the GOP candidates backed Trump's election fraud claims).

In 2019, Amazon pulled the plug on their AWS partnership with Twitter alternative GAB over user posts. CEO Andrew Torba essentially blamed the CIA - claiming that a "PSYOP campaign started back in early December" in which newly created accounts were "popping up out of nowhere and making threats of violence."

Torba's letter continues:

After this week, it's clear why this PSYOP was started: to take down alt-tech platforms and frame them for the January 6th protests that ended with the police killing an unarmed woman.

Almost instantly after police allowed protestors into the Capitol the New York Times started a baseless narrative that this protest was organized on alt-tech sites, and in particular on Gab, without offering any proof, screenshots, usernames, or evidence to back these baseless claims. I've recorded a video highlighting how this all played out. I hope you'll take some time to watch it to learn how the CIA Mockingbird Media complex operates. The way we fight back is with truth and by speaking truth to their power, which is quickly fading. 

Meanwhile, Parler has jumped to the #1 app in Apple's app store.

Parler saw approximately 210,000 installs globally on Friday 1/8, up 281% from approximately 55,000 on 1/7, according to data from the analytics service Sensor Tower. “In the U.S., the app saw approximately 182,000 first-time downloads on 1/8, up 355% from about 40,000 installs on 1/7. Since Wednesday, the app has seen approximately 268,000 installs from across U.S. app stores,” a press rep from Sensor Tower wrote in an email. -TechCrunch
And as conservatives scramble to download the app before it's deplatformed at yet another social media giant, we now have to wonder if they'll even be able to find a new home among a collusive constellation of big-tech - at least one of which used to value the phrase 'think different.'
Tyler Durden Sat, 01/09/2021 - 17:55

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UK Authorities Shut Down Vitamin D Recommendation for COVID



Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Dr. Mercola, unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked.

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Scottish Police Enter Home, Arrest Family After Neighbor Snitched On Them For Violating COVID Rules

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Scottish Police Enter Home, Arrest Family After Neighbor Snitched On Them For Violating COVID Rules

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Police in Scotland entered a home and arrested a family after a neighbor snitched on them because there were “too many people inside.”

The incident happened on Wednesday night at 11:20pm in Aberdeen and a clip of the encounter has since gone viral on social media.

“My house. That is bullying. This is my house. Get out of my house. I did not ask you in here,” says the woman as she is confronted by officers in her hallway.

“Just stop it mum,” says the woman’s daughter as the situation escalates.

This is what your taxes and capitulating to the government get you.

Scottish police use lockdown powers to storm into a home and violently arrest the family. The children screaming really fucked me up. pic.twitter.com/J6qfHLHKzv

— Speech God🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏳️‍🌈 (@CountDankulaTV) January 7, 2021

Particularly harrowing is that the children can be heard screaming as their parents are forcefully handcuffed.

Police Scotland later confirmed that the officers entered the home after a neighbor snitched.

“We received a complaint from a member of the public regarding a breach of coronavirus regulations at a property in Aberdeen, around 11.20pm on Wednesday, 6 January, 2021,” said a spokesman.

“Police officers are legally allowed to enter Britons’ homes if ‘that person reasonably suspects that an offence under regulation 5(1) is taking place on the premises,’ according to legislation,” reports the Daily Mail, although whether this applies under coronavirus regulations is still a subject of debate.

Three people were later charged with “assaulting officers” and “threatening and abusive behavior.”

As we have previously pointed out, the new national lockdown is virtually the same as the previous lockdown, with its primary purpose being to allow the police more draconian leeway in viciously enforcing the arbitrary rules.

As we highlighted earlier, two women were interrogated and fined by police for going on a walk in a remote area despite this not being a violation of the law.

*  *  *

New limited edition merch now available! Click here. In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/09/2021 - 08:10

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Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair: Hover Through the Fog and Filthy Air

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By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

The title of this piece was recited by The Three Witches in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and the photo symbolizes America’s recent history and the desired destiny for a large percentage of the nation’s voters:  An arrogant political leftist infiltrator, while donning the horns of Baphomet, holding a bullhorn in his left hand and an American flag subdued under his right fist.  It is the vision of Janus in transition, the two-faced god simultaneously seeing forward and backward; future and past.

Over the past two years, I have written multiple articles regarding episodes playing out on the national stage; and nearly every piece expressed my unease at the “movie-of-the-week”, or “reality television” vibe that accompanied those media narratives.  The episodes seemed so scripted…. so perfectly… contrived.

The recent “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington D.C. unwound in a similar, seemingly scripted, fashion.  Just like the election fraud that took place months earlier that was predicted by both President Trump and Vice President Pence many months before November 3, 2020, so was the potential for violence, and ANTIFA infiltration, predicted by AM radio hosts and other political commenters prior to the rally on January 6, 2021.

So here’s an interesting question:  Could anyone have scripted the events of the first week of the New Year that would have left Trump supporters more shamed, scorned, and deflated than they are now? And that’s the point: The outcomes are too perfect for the political left- right down to the predictable and exact 51% Democrat / 49% Republican split in the two Georgia senate run-off races the day prior.

Truly, we’ve now witnessed the magic spell of The Borg; and it is quite something to behold.

Throughout history, there has been a chaotic cadence to connected occurrences but, especially now, as the new normal winds out like clockwork. The timing and sequence of events was never going to change and The Borg could care less whether or not we now see the full scale of its deception and corruption.

I am reminded of certain Bible stories describing time periods where the devil was allowed to run riot. For example, when Old Testament nations were judged harshly by other tribes, or after the death of Jesus and the Apostles were left abandoned, scattered, and hiding in the dark.  Of course, Trump has proven to be no savior, so far.  And, yet, the legend of his example in the tide of time remains a valid comparison; beneath blue skies or gray.

There are lessons to be learned about hope. The tyrannical President Snow in the dystopian Hunger Games stories utilized it as follows:

Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.

And was that not the story of Trump?  A little hope, always just ahead, or around the corner, until the clock ran out.  Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending upon one’s mindset, Christians still have their hope.  So that makes them dangerous to The Borg because many Christians believe rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God:

 You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men.

-1 Corinthians 7.23

 

 “Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.”

-William Penn

 

It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes

-Psalm 118.9

Even now, there are those who believe Trump will pull the trigger on his last remaining option to save the republic: Executive Order 13848 – and that is the real reason why the Democrats are in such a hurry to impeach the president and remove him from office before Inauguration Day.  If Trump were to light that fuse, it would have global consequences and, quite possibly, square off nations such as China, Russia, and Israel, and, especially, in light of the perceived forthcoming fall-out  from a Biden/Harris administration.

As I questioned in an article from November:   If Trump were real, a true swamp fighter, then what would stop him from “going full Franco, declaring the election invalid, and beginning the arrests and executions; because if the Republic is over anyway… why not?

Some of Trump’s supporters still believe this may happen that is why Trump said “a new administration” will be inaugurated on January 20, 2021 accompanied by this cryptic tweet:

And to all of my wonderful supporters, I know you are disappointed but I also want you to know that our incredible journey is only just beginning.

More hopium? Or could anything happen, even now?  Either way, MAGA dreams die hard. After all, why would a U.S. president fully committed to making America great again, concede to an election he knows was stolen…. unless he was controlled opposition from the start?

I watched Trump’s “Stop the Steal” speech in Washington D.C. and it appeared he was exhausting all legal and political remedies. Admittedly, it was surreal to hear a U.S. President appeal to his vice-president to “do the right thing” and save the nation. It was also bizarre to see news networks, including Fox, broadcast close-up shots of the rally in order to make the crowd size appear smaller.

Certainly, there were many statements made by Trump that sounded like warnings, veiled threats, and, possibly, allusions to extreme measures.  As has always been the case with Trump, his interpretation depends upon where people find themselves on the political spectrum; and, in particular, on their view of The Swamp. Regardless, it appeared Trump’s speech was a final attempt at a legal remedy.  But that was before chaos ensued and a female Trump supporter was, apparently, executed by capital police:

As the “wild” events were occurring in the nation’s capital, Trump’s tweet on Mike Pence’s cowardice really told the Vice President off and gave him the works:

Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!

To be sure, it appeared there were trolls present in the storming of the capital building, either BLM or Antifa, or both. During one speech at around 4:30 PM (Eastern Time), a younger bald man was announcing demands through a loud speaker and said: “We demand 50% off everything!”  Undoubtedly, there were statements made, and demands declared, which sounded as if they were prepared by an exiled press secretary from the now-disbanded Republic of Chaz.

Overall, however, after a yuge rally, the storming of the capital looked like the last weak convulsions of a dead republic.  Or was it allowed to play out in order to begin something else?

Regardless, by that evening, America’s political leaders regathered on the floor of the senate and thanked the capitol police for defending the building against “insurrection”.  Additionally, there was a near-universal capitulation by the GOP.  We witnessed former Trump supporting senators such as Mike Lee (R-UT), Lindsay Graham (R-SC), and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) publicly abandon the president in an orgy of virtue-signaling enthusiasm.

Was it just me, or did Lindsay Graham appear smug and, even, excitedly satisfied in his concession speech to The Borg? And why are Democrats acting so frantic now, given the fact that Trump appears to have been completely canceled?

Does The Borg now fear what Trump might do next?

Probably not. Schumer and Pelosi’s current hysterics likely have more to do with completely humiliating the president as opposed to anything else; especially humiliation afflicted on the president as a message to those who would dare to follow in his footsteps.

But, seriously, given that, would anything Trump do next surprise you?

Twenty-three months ago, in an article entitled “On Channel Surfing, Circus Acts, and Time Passages”, I outlined how four U.S. Presidents experienced The Borg during their respective administrations:

What Abraham Lincoln foresaw, worried Woodrow Wilson, of which Dwight Eisenhower warned, that killed John F. Kennedy.

If Trump was either played by The Borg OR actually deceived his supporters on purpose, then, it would appear my above observations would need to be updated as follows:

What Abraham Lincoln foresaw, worried Woodrow Wilson, of which Dwight Eisenhower warned, that killed John F. Kennedy and finally made Donald J. Trump irrelevant as the U.S. Constitution was irredeemably made null and void.

If a stolen presidential election is allowed to stand, then America’s social contract is annulled.  And, if it turns out the Deplorables were, in fact, trolled by Trump all along, then what would be the most effective ways for a decapitated movement to now wage battle against The Borg?

Perhaps, as written in the comment section of my last article:

….Through the randomly disconnected anonymity of lone solo artists seeing points of weakness, lines of supply, brake lines, internet cables, control grids, electrical hubs and asking what can be won. Call it ‘surprise warfare’ by the ‘antiborg.’

Other than that, what kind of offensive could be launched in the absence of regional and national leadership? Who will lead? Who has the ability? What remains realistically, and statistically, possible? What can be won?

These are good questions because campaign rallies can generate much enthusiasm for political leaders but storming government buildings with no plan in place simply makes for strange television.

As of this writing, the headlines in the Orwellian Media are screaming about the death of a capitol police officer who died from injuries after clashing with the “pro-Trump mob”.

And what a clash it must have been, no? Especially, in-between the selfies taken with the capitol police.

Much of The Borg’s power lies in its ability to spin narratives through the Orwellian Media.  Honestly, it is a numbers game and The Borg has the largest bullhorn when it comes to reaching the largest numbers of malleable minds while massaging the belief systems of the masses.

As many readers may know, I started my blog in the fall of 2016 as a middle-finger flip to the (seemingly then certain) eventuality of President Hillary and her criminal cabal. I did so after being inspired by the courage of the writers throughout the free blogosphere. In retrospect, I was glad that Trump won and I’m satisfied with everything I’ve written before his presidency and since; even while fully understanding my meager contributions have made zero difference in the ongoing tide of global events.

Truly, it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.  I still believe that while knowing I have potentially placed myself, and my family, at increased risk in the days ahead.

My last article posted on the internet obtained over 80,000 views on one alternative internet website and, perhaps, maybe thousands of more hits on other sites.  It does appear that it was translated into German and posted on at least two German websites.  I also received pingbacks from several other websites and the article obtained readership in scores of countries throughout the world.

Even so, it is small potatoes when compared to the billions reached by the Orwellian Media globally.  The old saying is true: Lies travel the world twice as the truth ties its shoes.  And, that, my friends, is how shit happens.

In the article hyperlinked within the first paragraph of this piece (above and here), a video of whistleblower Catherine Austin Fitts was hyperlinked where she described her speculation on the Covid Vaccination Agenda as genetic software being downloaded into people. Of course, the video has since been taken down by YouTube for violating the site’s terms of service (wink, wink).  But, in the video originally posted, Fitts more emphasized the mRNA vaccine as a potential application for tracking and interfacing with The Borg system. She also discussed some interesting observations regarding the Antifa riots burning down businesses around Federal Reserve locations in select cities and speculated it was a way for The Borg to buy up the distressed real-estate at fire-sale pricing (my words, not hers) so The Borg can continue building out its panopticon in those cities. In other words, it may be the strategy to pair the crypto-financial and vaccine networks (as discussed in my article) within large urban areas.

Regardless, when one person makes certain speculations, I might find it interesting. When another comes up with conclusions that would seemingly correspond, it captures my interest more. And, when a third person theorizes in a similar fashion, I begin to wonder if the theory might merit more consideration.

This video link below features Professor Delores Cahill, a molecular biologist and immunologist from Ireland and Alexandra Henrion-Caude from the French Institute of Health and Medical Research. Both women describe how the current Covid mRNA vaccinations can change people’s molecular biology and actually kill those who were vaccinated when they get sick later:

Why People Will Start DYING A Few Months After The First mRNA Vaccination

Additionally, in the video below, at the 32:21 mark to the 34:05 mark… tech titan turned world savior, Bill Gates, is discussed. At around the 33:00 minute mark, Attorney Lin Wood claimed Gates designed the Covid vaccinations to weaken people’s immune systems.

Fireside Chat With Lin Wood- Episode 3 (Ooops, that one was recently taken down by YouTube, too. )

So, especially given all of the online censorship, perhaps there is a conspiracy afoot to ramp up the Covid hysteria in order to further The Borg’s agenda for control as follows:  Frighten the public with “new strains” of Covid “mutations” and, then, when people start dying in 2021 – it would validate the “mutated strains” lie and serve as an accelerant to both vaccinations and lockdowns.

Certainly, the MSM would obfuscate any association between previous vaccinations and any deaths. But those who were awake would be able to make those connections. And, if it actually happened, then it would be a conspiracy no longer.  Well, on second thought, it would still be considered as conspiracy by all of the usual suspects in the Orwellian Media.

In any event, hopefully, it won’t happen. But given all we’ve seen so far, would anyone reading this be surprised?

Either way, there must be some reason why censorship is trending on the internet.  And, in the aftermath of the U.S. Congress failing to honor their sworn oath to uphold the Constitution, it could explain why The Borg is now declaring “Conspiracy Theory Extremism” as the New War on Terror®:

The biggest threat to humanities [sic] survival in 2021. ChemTrails x 5G x COVID Vax = EXTERMINATION event,” declared a Jan. 2 tweet from a self-declared QAnon account, mishmashing some of the conspiracy theories that could propel people convinced they must combat a perceived threat into taking potentially violent action.

As we repeatedly saw in 2020, conspiracy theories jump into the void created by upheaval and continue to be stoked by grassroots movements and authority figures. Coronavirus conspiracy theories have had devastating public health consequences by encouraging people to not take the threat seriously, compounded by vaccination opponents claiming Bill Gates wants to microchip people or asserting other claims about the goals of inoculation programs. Conspiracy theories that have warranted the attention of homeland security also include those pushed by QAnon supporters alleging “deep state” conspiracies and more, the 5G conspiracy theories that allege the technology is used to track people and/or spread COVID, and the white supremacist “great replacement” theory that claims there is an organized plot against whites and has been cited by mass shooters in Christchurch and El Paso.

 Obviously, an ill wind has blown through America over a period of many decades.  It’s stronger now, and it smells like treason.  What separates this current revolution from previous turnings, however, is the existence of panoptic surveillance technology.  And the Eye of Sauron Horus must not be feared until it focuses directly on you, or me.

Until then, it seems the time has come for “Irish Democracy”:

More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called “Irish Democracy”—the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people—than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs.

The premise behind “Irish Democracy” is that the State lacks the enforcement power to have its way with millions upon millions of rebels. It’s Mohandas Gandhi’s strategy, albeit without his overt confrontations with the institutions of government. “You can ignore the State and do as you please, as long as you keep your head down.”

Removing the overt confrontations makes “Irish Democracy” much safer than any other form of rebellion. The State needs conspicuous, targetable rebels. It cannot use terror of its forces without someone to turn into an “example.” No conspicuous rebels means nothing for the State to crucify for the edification of the public.

This is because The Borg has taken names, and will soon begin its wholesale ass-kicking and taking revenge upon those refusing to beg and grovel before its “new normal”.  If you don’t believe me, ask Attorney Sydney Powell who has been sued by Dominion Voting Systems for $1.3 billion in damages.

Message received.

Do you think Powell will receive a fair trial during the Biden/Harris administration?

And that’s how MAGA dreams will die, leaving only the faded memories of apple pie, baseball, and the American way.  Was Trump worthy of the hopeful endeavors by his supporters? Or did the president, instead, hang patriotic Americans out to dry?

Once upon a time in this nation, the rule of law protected the citizens from tyranny. But over the last century, Norman Rockwell’s America was murdered by double-minded traitors professing loyalty while stabbing those whom they were supposed to serve in their sleep, just like Shakespeare’s King Duncan was betrayed by General Macbeth and his conniving wife.

If it were possible, I would pray for their guilt to consume them; like fires fading and dying in the dark.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

William Shakespeare, “Macbeth” ,  Act 5, scene 5, lines 16–27.



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Friday, January 8, 2021

CENSORED: Brandon Straka #WalkAway



Trump supporter and former Democrat Brandon Straka, organizer of the movement to #WalkAway from the Democrat party, says Facebook has banned his #WalkAway campaign and the members of his team. For more CENSORED topics and people, visit here.

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Twitter’s Outrageous Reason Offered for Permanently Banning President Donald Trump from Twitter Could Be Used to Ban Anyone

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Twitter announced on Friday that it has permanently banned President Donald Trump from Twitter. The reason offered in the announcement is one that could be used to ban anyone from Twitter. The announcement is effectively a declaration that nobody is safe from the arbitrary exercise of Twitter’s power to close down accounts.

Twitter does not claim that the two posts for which Trump is banned actually contain anything whatsoever troublesome. Instead, Twitter says Trump is banned from Twitter because of how the two tweets “are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter.”

Of course, Trump has no control over how people receive and interpret what he posts. Neither do you, me, or anyone regarding any posts we may make at Twitter. Nonetheless, Twitter claims it has banned Trump because Twitter has taken a disliking to what it says are some people’s receptions and interpretations regarding two of Trump’s tweets.

It’s over people. Nothing you can do can ensure Twitter does not deem you, like Trump, as having run afoul of its rules and thus being subject to banning.

Here are Trump’s two supposedly naughty tweets as related in Twitter’s announcement:
On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump tweeted:

“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

Shortly thereafter, the President tweeted:

“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
Twitter declares in its announcement that these two tweets violate Twitter’s “Glorification of Violence Policy.” Glorification of violence? Give me a break. The man spoke positively about the future of people who voted for him and said he will not attend the United States presidential inauguration later this month. That’s it — no violence glorification whatsoever.

Since there is nothing troublesome in Trump’s own words posted at Twitter, the Twitter announcement engages in a creative writing exercise of how some people may receive and interpret Trump’s words in ways that Twitter finds disturbing or related to violence. The announcement includes this list of factors that Twitter says are among the reasons for banning Trump from the site:
- President Trump’s statement that he will not be attending the Inauguration is being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate and is seen as him disavowing his previous claim made via two Tweets (12) by his Deputy Chief of Staff, Dan Scavino, that there would be an “orderly transition” on January 20th.

- The second Tweet may also serve as encouragement to those potentially considering violent acts that the Inauguration would be a “safe” target, as he will not be attending.

- The use of the words “American Patriots” to describe some of his supporters is also being interpreted as support for those committing violent acts at the US Capitol.

- The mention of his supporters having a “GIANT VOICE long into the future” and that “They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” is being interpreted as further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an “orderly transition” and instead that he plans to continue to support, empower, and shield those who believe he won the election.

- Plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021.
Give me a break. Couldn’t Twitter just keep it simple:
Twitter is banning Trump because Twitter dislikes Trump. If you have a problem with that, tough.
Think you are safe from being banned by Twitter? Think again.

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DC Passes Bill B23-017 To Vaccinate Children Without Parental Knowledge Or Consent @ age 11

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Wardo Rants January 9th, 2021. DC Passes Bill B23-017 To Vaccinate Children Without Parental Knowledge Or Consent @ age 11 This bill is so diabolical,...

The post DC Passes Bill B23-017 To Vaccinate Children Without Parental Knowledge Or Consent @ age 11 appeared first on From the Trenches World Report.



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Wednesday's Other Story: Taibbi

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Wednesday's Other Story: Taibbi

Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

Just before the madness at the Capitol broke out Wednesday, news came from London. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who seemed Monday to be the luckiest man alive when a judge denied an American request to extradite him, was now denied bail on the grounds that he might “fail to surrender to court to face” the inevitable U.S. appeal. He goes back to legal purgatory, possibly a worse outcome than extradition, which might be the idea.

We sell politics in American media as a soap opera, and the personalities make for lively copy, but properly following the bouncing ball means watching institutions, not characters. Where are armies, banks, central banks, intelligence services, the press? Whose money is talking on the floor of the House and the Senate? How concentrated is financial and political power? How do public and private institutions coordinate? When they coordinate, what are their collective aims? How transparent are they or aren’t they? How accountable?

Assange became a celebrity at a time when popular interest in these questions was at its zenith in the United States. Eight years of the Bush administration inspired profound concern about the runaway power of the state, especially a new secret state-within-a-state the Bush administration insisted 9/11 gave them the moral mandate to build.

Our invasion of Iraq had been a spectacular failure — unlike pictures of returning coffins, that couldn’t be completely covered up — and Americans learned about grotesque forms of war profiteering. These included the use of mercenaries to whom the taxpayer unknowingly paid lavish sums, to commit horrific war crimes like the Nissour Square Massacre, also known as “Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday.”

One of Donald Trump’s most indefensible (and bizarrely, least commented-upon) acts was the pardon of the four Blackwater guards who shot and killed those seventeen Iraqi civilians, including women and children. The New York Times story covering the Blackwater pardon spent just four paragraphs on the case, sticking it below apparently more outrageous acts like the pardon of George Papadopoulos.

“Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday” took place in 2007, by which time we were bombing and kidnapping all over the world, disappearing people off streets like the Bogey Man of fairy tales. Detainees were taken to secret prisons where, we later learned, efforts by prisoners to starve themselves out of their misery were thwarted by a diet of raisins, nuts, pasta, and hummus rocketed up the back door through “the widest possible tube.”

Even years later, one Gitmo prisoner would waive his right to appear in court because “rectal damage” made it too painful to sit. We made mistakes in who we selected for this treatment, grabbing people with no connection to anything for torture, as films like Taxi to the Dark Side documented. However, Americans seemed to lose interest in these policies once the Iraq misadventure came to a sort-of end, and a new president was elected.

The rise of Wikileaks introduced an uncontrollable variable into our drift toward authoritarianism. The WMD episode had shown again that our press, the supposed first line of defense against abuses, could not be relied upon. For every expose like Abu Ghraib, there were a hundred stories that either went uncovered or advanced official deceptions.

Wikileaks anticipated a future in which the press would not only be pliant accomplices to power in this way, but where information itself would be tightly controlled by governments using far-reaching and probably extralegal new technological concepts, deploying misleading excuses for clampdowns.

One of the first Wikileaks document dumps involved the Thai government’s blacklist of Internet sites, which was billed as a way to stop child pornography but had in fact been used to remove as many as 1200 sites critical of the Thai royal family, among other things. “The Thai system was used to censor Australia reportage about the imprisoned Australian writer Harry Nicolaides,” Assange noted, in 2009.

Wikileaks also released the Camp Manual for Guantanamo Bay, which among other things revealed that children as young as 15 were being held, along with 900+ other files about a place essentially closed off to even theoretical press review. Another early dump involved the Minton report, about toxic dumping in the Ivory Coast by the firm Trafigura, which in yet another preview of a future of information control had obtained a court order to prevent The Guardian from printing.

In the 2010 Collateral Murder video, an Apache helicopter crew falsely claims to have encountered a firefight and lights up a Baghdad street, killing a dozen people, including two Reuters employees. Somehow even more disturbing than the killing is the dialogue captured between pilots and base. They’re laughing in parts, saying things like, “Just fuckin’ once you get on ‘em, just open ‘em up,” “All right, hahaha, I hit em,” and “Hey, you shoot, I’ll talk.”

For all the talk about the madness of Donald Trump — and I wrote one of those pieces — this was something more dangerous, i.e. institutional insanity. We were factory-producing sociopathic murder, by air, in a process that would become more depersonalized. As early as 2011 we learned the Pentagon was working on a software-based system for identifying and eliminating targets by drone, in an effort to remove the potentially complicating variable of human conscience. The implications of this are the stuff of sci-fi movies: outsourcing feeling, judgment, and responsibility to machines, which incidentally would eventually use similar software to determine how much about these questions could be disclosed to human audiences.

Collateral Murder came out when Americans were also learning about serious corruption at home. After the 2008 financial crash, the Obama administration made historic decisions to reorganize the economy through a series of bailouts and interventions that not only rewarded the worst actors, but super-concentrated power in the hands of newly merged financial institutions. The most significant decisions were made in secret, including at a remarkable post-crash meeting of financial leaders at the Fed whose lurid story would be reinvented as heroic fairy tale in Too Big To Fail.

Wikileaks would go on to release financial secrets as well, including the draft charter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and, far more damaging, eighty pages of transcripts of paid speeches Hillary Clinton to Wall Street banks, where again the most damaging revelations were lingual. Clinton was shown admitting she was “far removed” from ordinary life because of the “economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy,” while speaking to Goldman, Sachs about the importance of developing “a middle class that can buy the products.”

By 2016 Assange had been peeled away from many public supporters. A long campaign of surveillance and multiple scandals dimmed his star, with lowlights including the issuance of a Swedish arrest warrant over an alleged sexual assault. People will argue about whether or not he brought this fate on himself. To me it’s irrelevant: the issue, again, is the institution, not the person. The institutional concept of an unregulated leak site has always been the target in this story, far more than Julian Assange.

Even if one stipulates that every piece of negative news ever written about Assange is true, his story is still primarily about the closing of an informational loophole during a time of ambitious efforts to throw a net of secrecy around the expansion of executive power. It was big news in the Bush years when an American named Jose Padilla was whisked away as an enemy combatant. In the Obama years, the pushed envelope was the first droning without trial of an American, al-Qaeda’s Anwar al-Awlaki. Was he the most sympathetic victim? Maybe not, but the widened principle mattered. And there was the matter of his sixteen-year-old son, whom we also killed. These decisions took place in an increasingly large space exempt from public review of any kind.

When Assange disappeared into the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, there were already discussions about bringing him to the United States to face treason charges. This was a death penalty offense, the Brookings Institution noted, not worrying at the oddness of charging a foreigner with such a crime. Long before 2016, when Assange lost the support of most liberals for good through the release of the Podesta and DNC files, politicians like Joe Biden were calling Assange a “high-tech terrorist,” language that ought to have raised serious questions given the practices revealed in Collateral Murder, and cases like al-Awlaki’s: we kill terrorists, after all.

Assange isn’t there yet, but he’s on his way, a health wreck. As Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi explained in our interview on Useful Idiots this week, Assange has not been outside since 2012. He seems destined to end up sharing the fate of those Gitmo prisoners in head-bags whose condition was one of the first Wikileaks scoops: kept in a kind of legal nowhere forever, unable even to escape through suicide.

Like the Blackwater pardon, the Assange prosecution was simultaneously one of Trump’s worst and least-commented-upon acts. This was a real act of authoritarianism, not some piddling conspiracy with Giliuanis and Stones, but an act made in full cooperation with the awesome power of the American state. We’ll learn a lot about the Biden administration’s real attitude toward Trump’s “authoritarian” leanings by their handling of the case. It should tell people something that the same Obama White House that prosecuted eight leakers under the Espionage Act hesitated to go there with Assange. They understood the implications.

When interviewed about the case in 2019, former Attorney General Eric Holder was asked if a publisher should be charged criminally. “If you are acting in a pure journalistic sense, no,” he said. “You look at the leaker you don’t look at the journalists.” However, he said, “if you’re acting at the behest of a foreign power, you are in a fundamentally different position.”

The Assange indictment, however, is not about working with a foreign power, but entirely about Collateral Murder-era actions. Seventeen of the eighteen counts are Espionage Act charges that criminalize the obtaining, possessing, and publishing of “national defense information”:

The last count is about the alleged offer to help Manning crack a security hash. Given that each of the Espionage Act counts carries a potential ten-year sentence, this case is about making not just the release, but even the solicitation of material like Collateral Murder punishable by life sentence.

You don’t have to like Julian Assange to grasp the gravity of this. The application of the Espionage Act in this fashion means that reporting going forward will only be legal when not really damaging. This is the outcome Nixon wanted in the Pentagon Papers case (“Goddamn it, somebody’s got to go to jail on that!”). It makes the reporter on the next My Lai or Abu Ghraib a potential criminal or unperson.

In conjunction with the widespread recent crackdowns on other kinds of speech by tech platforms, the continued exile of other transgressors like Snowden, and the rehabilitation of people like former CIA chief John Brennan, who committed perjury about these issues in the congressional chamber whose violated sanctity so infuriated America this week, it’s an enormous power grab — not a temporary one like the Capitol occupation, but a permanent, far-reaching assertion of institutional dominance.

In our discussion with Maurizi this week, she talked about having her phone seized and its contents stolen by yet another American mercenary firm, as part of a sweep apparently done to every visitor to Assange in the embassy years. “They secretly unscrewed my phone,” she said, adding that data and pictures from her sim card were downloaded, her conversations with Assange recorded. “And they knew I was a journalist,” she said.

Even though at least one of the affected journalists visiting the embassy was from the Washington Post, there was almost no reaction here at all. We’ve become inured to these violations. The authoritarian behaviors that freaked people out in the Bush and early Obama years have become as invisible as air to most Americans, who, lucky for many, mostly stopped following that bouncing ball the moment Trump arrived. Now Trump is on his way out, but the lockdown era is just beginning. You’ll forgive me if I’m more scared of that than the other thing.

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/08/2021 - 23:05

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The Boot Is Coming Down Hard And Fast



A lot’s been happening really fast. It’s a white noise saturation day and it’s impossible to keep track of everything going on, so I’m just going to post my thoughts on a few of the things that have happened.

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Trump Campaign Banned From EMAILING Supporters After Being Suspended By Mail Service Provider

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The Trump campaign is now blocked from emailing their millions of supporters after being suspended by their email service provider.

The suspension comes shortly after President Donald Trump and his campaign were permanently banned from Twitter.

The email service, Campaign Monitor, confirmed the suspension of the account to Financial Times’ Dave Lee.

The Nationalist Review reports “the move effectively cuts off communication between his team and his core supporters. What is not clear however, is what other services have banned his team. The Trump campaign sends out a massive amount of emails—33 in January so far. But, it has been 48 hours since the campaign has reached out to its supporters via email, prompting most journalists to speculate that other providers have shut off access as well.”

There hasn’t been any Trump emails for more than 48 hours. Almost unheard of — he sent 33 in the first six days of Jan; 2,500+ last year. (h/t @TrumpEmail)

At least one of the services the team used, @CampaignMonitor, has suspended Trump’s access, the company confirmed.

— Dave Lee (@DaveLeeFT) January 9, 2021

In a statement, Campaign Monitor claimed that the campaign probably has other methods of sending emails to supporters.

“The self-service account associated with the Donald Trump Campaign has been suspended as of today, January 7th, 2021. Typically, political campaigns use multiple email service providers to send campaign, fundraising and other emails,” Campaign Monitor said in a statement about the ban. “Based on the low volume of emails that had been sent from the Campaign Monitor account, this is likely a very small portion of total email activity from the campaign.”

The post Trump Campaign Banned From EMAILING Supporters After Being Suspended By Mail Service Provider appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.



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Leading Virologist Says Coronavirus Pandemic is “The Greatest Hoax Ever Perpetrated on an Unsuspecting Public”

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A top virologist and pathologist in Canada told government officials that the coronavirus pandemic is, “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public,” and that, “paper masks and fabric masks are simply virtue signaling.”

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Nearly Half Of U.S. Voters Believe Health Officials Have Been Misleading With COVID Data

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Nearly Half Of U.S. Voters Believe Health Officials Have Been Misleading With COVID Data

Submitted by Planet Free Will

Nearly 50% of U.S. voters believe that public health officials have been misleading when providing data on the coronavirus pandemic, a recent Just the News Daily poll shows. According to the poll, forty-eight percent of voters believe public health leaders have “misrepresented the data” to build support for certain policies while 34% of respondents say officials “reported the true facts” on the pandemic. 

The remaining 18% were unsure one way or the other. 

As Just the News notes:

Official study and management of the COVID-19 pandemic has generated massive amounts of epidemiological data such as transmission rates, death rates, and other virological information. Many analysts and commentators have argued that public officials have offered misleading interpretations of these data over the course of the public health crisis.

The data comes in the wake of Dr. Anthony Fauci admitting he lied to Americans to manipulate their acceptance of a Covid-19 vaccine.

Fauci admitted in December that he intentionally deceived the public on what percentage of the population will need to be immunized to achieve herd immunity against Covid-19 and bring a return to normalcy.

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Fauci said. 

“Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85,” he added.

Fauci ultimately admitted he doesn’t know the exact number of vaccinated Americans that could result in herd immunity.

Also likely adding to the mistrust in public data, the World Health Organization admitted last month that the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test – which was once hailed as the gold standard of COVID testing – can produce large numbers of false positives.

PCR test results have been used by states and countries to justify the lockdown and social distancing policies that have lead to the decimation of small business and mental health.

The FDA has recently joined the WHO in admitting that there is a notable risk of false results from the standard PCR-Test.

“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is alerting patients and health care providers of the risk of false results… with the Curative SARS-Cov-2 test,” the FDA announced on Monday.

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/08/2021 - 19:05

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Twitter suspends Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, other Trump allies

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Michael Flynn (Courtesy Gage Skidmore)

After temporarily suspending President Trump's account on Wednesday, Twitter late Friday afternoon permanently banned the accounts of several of his prominent allies, including lawyer Sidney Powell and his former national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

The social media giant's stated reason for banning the two and others was "behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm."

Earlier Friday, Dominion Voting Systems filed a nearly $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against Powell, accusing her of orchestrating a "demonstrably false" conspiracy theory about the company's role in the 2020 election.

A Twitter spokesman told Fox News that Flynn's tweets were related to the conspiracy website QAnon and calls to violence.

The accounts, according to a Twitter spokesman who spoke with NBC News, violated a "policy on Coordinated Harmful Activity."

"We've been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm, and given the renewed potential for violence surrounding this type of behavior in the coming days, we will permanently suspend accounts that are solely dedicated to sharing QAnon content," the spokesman said.

Twitter on Wednesday suspended Trump's account after the breach of the Capitol building on the heels of his rally in front of the White House. Facebook and Instagram banned Trump from posting on their platforms until at least the Jan. 20 inauguration.

Talk-radio host Kevin McCullough, a leading promoter of evidence of vote fraud in the 2020 election, was suspended by Twitter on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Facebook has suspended the account of Brandon Straka, the former Democrat who founded the #WalkAway movement.

He said his organization's page, which had "hundreds of thousands of testimonials" from people explaining why they left the Democratic Party.

He appealed to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who has led investigations of Big Tech censorship in the Senate.

"This is only the beginning of a total conservative shutdown if we don’t get help," Straka said.

🇺🇸@SenTedCruz @tedcruz I need your help. PLEASE CONTACT ME. The entire #WalkAway movement & every employee & volunteer from my organization was BANNED today from Facebook
This is only the beginning of a total conservative shutdown if we don’t get help.
Patriots, PLZ retweet🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 https://t.co/5znsPZYfgC

— Brandon Straka (@BrandonStraka) January 8, 2021

Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@wndnewscenter.org.

wnd-donation-graphic-2-2019

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Parler booted from Google Play; Apple threatens to ban it from App Store



Parler, the social media app that has billed itself as a free-speech alternative to Twitter, was banned from Google Play on Friday over its moderation policies, and is reportedly facing banishment from Apple's App Store unless it modifies those same policies.

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Trade organization for home sellers imposes speech ban on members' private lives

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Investigations.]

By John Murawski
Real Clear Investigations

In what some consider one of the most far-reaching social policy moves in the corporate world, the National Association of Realtors, called the nation's largest trade organization, has revised its professional ethics code to ban “hate speech and harassing speech” by its 1.4 million members.

The sweeping prohibition applies to association members 24/7, covering all communication, private and professional, written and spoken, online and off. Punishment could top out at a maximum fine of $15,000 and expulsion from the organization.

Mary Wagner, a Buffalo real estate agent who is white and lesbian, says the move, announced in November, fits her vision for creating a fairer society. She predicts thousands of complaints this year, given the realtor association's enormous size and the overheated climate of social media.

“I was thrilled to hear it,” Wagner said in a phone interview. “I think it’s long overdue.”

NAR’s decision, allowing any member of the public to file a complaint, has alarmed other real estate agents, and also some legal and ethics experts, who say the hate speech ban’s vagueness is an invitation to censor controversial political opinions, especially on race and gender. While that’s not the association’s stated intention, the skeptics say their fears are justified by the hyperactive “cancel culture” online that has jettisoned hapless workers for posting “all lives matter” and objecting to gay marriage.

“The dam has broken and other organizations will look at this,” predicted Robert Föehl, a professor of business ethics and business law at Ohio University.

“If this is good for real estate agents, why not attorneys, why not doctors?” Föehl said. “They’re going to be pressured to do what NAR has done. And that pressure is going to be very real, because what organization wants to argue they should allow hate speech by their members?”

A week after the association approved the ban, its president, Charlie Oppler, profusely apologized for NAR’s historic role in housing discrimination and redlining, the former practice of denying loans to buyers in certain neighborhoods based on their race, during an online fair-housing summit. NAR is still a predominantly white organization, where African Americans account for just 6% of members.

NAR’s hate speech policy is noteworthy because it sweeps up 1.4 million people under an ethics standard that explicitly places limits on private speech, to be adjudicated through formal procedures. The organization’s new policy provides an avenue for the NAR to investigate, fine – and potentially expel – real estate agents who insult, threaten or harass people or social groups based on race, sex, gender or other legally protected characteristics.

“It is taking something that’s been happening on a kind-of informal and occasional basis – indeed, people do sometimes end up losing jobs because of their political expression – and shifting it to something that’s institutionalized, that’s bureaucratized, and that’s being enforced through quasi-legal tribunals,” said Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor who specializes in the First Amendment.

Volokh said such policies pose significant risks for abuse, and should be assessed not for their good intentions but for their potential to misfire.

“What we’re talking about is a new blacklist,” Volokh said. “One of the things that’s troubling about the National Association of Realtors’ position is that it is trying to deploy the organized economic power of this group in order to suppress dissenting political views among members.”

In the current climate of cancel culture and vigilante justice on Twitter, where a single misdeed can become amplified into the defining act of one’s life, some real estate agents fear the new speech code will be used to censor agents who express disapproval of affirmative action, gay marriage, transgender pronouns, Black Lives Matter, undocumented immigrants or other politicized issues. Such concerns were validated last month by a federal judge who struck down an anti-discrimination speech code imposed on Pennsylvania lawyers, saying that the ban’s vagueness amounted to open season on politically unpopular opinions.

NAR’s speech code has sowed such confusion and anxiety among the rank-and-file that NAR plans to issue “case interpretations” this year to reassure its members and offer guidance on what is and isn’t allowed.

Among those caught up in the uncertainty are real estate agents who are Christian preachers or Sunday school teachers, or anyone who expresses traditional religious views on gender and sexuality that are out of vogue in some circles today.

“We're getting a lot of people asking about whether or not they can say that they are against gay marriage,” NAR staffer Diane Mosley said during an online training session on Nov. 30. “Specifically, if they can back it up with Scriptures, or say it in a sermon.”

The association’s speech code is still being hashed out, and in a very public way, thanks to Zoom. While the initial debate and votes by its Professional Standards Committee and board of directors were conducted in secret, NAR’s subsequent monthly online training sessions offer a glimpse at how such rules come into being, how difficult they can be to interpret and to enforce – and what other corporations and organizations can expect if they follow NAR’s example.

“Are we worried about losing members? We may, but I’m certainly not losing sleep over that,” said Matt Difanis, the Champaign, Ill., broker who chairs NAR’s Professional Standards Committee, in a Dec. 16 training session.

“We want being a Realtor to mean something,” Difanis stated, “and if somebody says, ‘I feel so strongly about continuing to have access to hate speech on demand that I don’t want to be a Realtor anymore’ – okay.”

NAR did not make Difanis, who is white and serves as its point man on the new speech code, available for an interview; all his comments in this article were taken from two hour-long training sessions and one eight-minute explanatory video available online.

In these recordings, Difanis makes an impassioned plea to the nation’s Realtors, citing the moral debt he says the real estate industry has incurred as a leading participant in the perpetuation of racism in the 20th century.

“Colleagues, remember: We quite literally drew the color lines. Our fingerprints as Realtors are all over the redlining maps, which decades – 52 years – after Fair Housing became the law of the land, those Fair Housing maps still scar our landscape by continuing to define color lines in our residential housing patterns,” Difanis said.

A Wider National Remorse on Race

His collective mea culpa echoes the remorse and anguish other organizations, most notably universities, have expressed for their historical role in profiting from slavery and segregation. It also evokes the personal penitence expressed in recent months by corporate chief executives for their own white privilege and cluelessness about how systemic racism has benefited them personally.

“I view it as a moral imperative,” Difanis said. “I won’t live long enough to see us undo the economic in the years that predate Fair Housing.”

NAR membership offers access to training, education and networking, as well as the privilege of referring to oneself as a “Realtor,” NAR’s pedigreed title for its members that the organization has trademarked.

NAR does not issue real estate licenses – that function is the domain of state licensing boards – so expulsion is not an automatic banishment from the profession. But in many parts of the country, NAR membership is required to gain access to the Multiple Listing Service, a searchable online database that sorts available real estate properties by parameters such as square footage, acreage, architectural style and much more. “If I were to lose access to that it would potentially devastate my ability to perform my career duties,” a Realtor commented on NAR’s Facebook page.

The complaints and cases, which are to be adjudicated like mini-trials with evidence and lawyers, will be assigned to some 1,100 local NAR associations across the country, but many of the locals delegate the ethics reviews to state associations. The legalistic procedures set NAR’s internal process apart from employers who impulsively jettison employees as liabilities to appease the Twitter mob.

However, the local and state chapters don’t have to report total complaints, dismissals and resolutions to the national office, so it won’t be known how the new policy is playing out and if local chapters are issuing wildly inconsistent decisions or dismissing legitimate complaints. NAR can’t say how many complaints have been filed since the hate speech ban was adopted Nov. 13.

All hate speech complaints and decisions against Realtors would be confidential so there would be no public knowledge of a case against someone, unless the Realtor or another person disclosed it. But as part of the new speech code, NAR now requires its local and state associations to notify the state licensing authority that a Realtor violated the “public trust” if an ethics complaint led to a finding that the Realtor was guilty of hate speech in the course of a real estate transaction. Additionally, it is possible that state laws and brokerage policies in some parts of the country may also require a Realtor to disclose the accusation or the adjudication to the brokerage for whom they work.

Föehl noted that private employers have a legal incentive to make sure employees’ social media activity isn’t contributing to a discriminatory or hostile work environment, but it’s virtually unheard of for a membership organization to adopt such a restrictive policy with respect to its members.

“It feels unprecedented,” Föehl said. “The stretch and reach into the personal lives of the association members is a very intrusive move.”

Private employers and membership organizations are not bound by the First Amendment. And private employers are protected by the “at will” employment doctrine that allows them to fire workers for arbitrary reasons (as long as they are not discriminating based on race, sex, religion or other protected classes). About two dozen states have laws limiting the ability of a private employer from firing a worker for political speech or other personal conduct the boss might not personally like.

'Sword of Damocles' Over Pennsylvania Lawyers

Nevertheless, there are signs that the expansion of such policies may be bumping up against other rights. Last month, a federal court struck down a professional conduct rule for Pennsylvania lawyers; the rule stated that it is professional misconduct for a lawyer to express or engage in bias, prejudice, harassment or discrimination. The rule was limited to “the practice of law” but it expanded that concept, adding continuing education, seminars, conferences and bar association activities where education credits are offered.

The rule was challenged by Zach Greenberg, a staff attorney for the conservative Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), who said it would expose him to endless ethics complaints because his work often involves describing and citing examples of speech many people find hateful and offensive, including the N-word or expressions such as “God hates fags.”

The judge agreed, saying the Pennsylvania ban was too vague and would “hang over Pennsylvania attorneys like the sword of Damocles.”

“The big issue with these rules is that they create unbridled discretion for organizations to enforce the rules however they like,” Greenberg said by phone. “That’s a really dangerous game they’re playing because the question of what is offensive is really in the eye of the beholder.”

The NAR prohibition states: “Realtors must not use harassing speech, hate speech, epithets, or slurs based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity.” NAR plans to assess context as much as content when evaluating speech that is subject of a complaint. NAR’s intention is to target what Difanis calls “weaponized hate speech, the sort of stuff that gets turned on like a blowtorch and aimed against other people.”

Difanis said the speech code is not intended to penalize expressions of religious belief or public policy, or comments that someone happens to find politically disagreeable, personally upsetting or generically offensive – for example: inadvertently misgendering someone.

While the ban applies to all hate speech – written and spoken – it will require “clear and convincing” evidence to prove in a hearing, he said. And it equally protects people who are white, male and Christian from a Realtor’s hate speech, he noted.

Those protections give peace of mind to Cory Kammerdiener, a nondenominational Christian minister in Spring, Tex., who owns Newhomeprogram.com and employs about a dozen Realtors and contractors.

Kammerdiener, who is biracial, believes that the Scriptures teach that homosexuality is an unnatural sexual act, similar to premarital sex, adultery and pornography. But he says that a real estate license obligates agents to treat all people equally regardless of sexual preference or gender identity.

“There’s people that are believers that may say, ‘Hey, I can’t talk about these things?’” Kammerdiener said. “No, that’s not what it’s saying.”

His understanding is that an opinion becomes hate speech only “if you’re weaponizing it – which is a term you’re going to see they use over and over – which results in hurting or alienating another person, like, ‘Hey, you’re going go to hell.’”

A white Realtor, Tracy Watson of Fuquay-Varina, N.C., suggested that the new speech code should trouble no one except those who are prone to get in trouble.

“Before I got into real estate I worked in the corporate field and I was held to the same standards,” Watson said by email. “I think those that need to worry about the change may need to take a look as to why.”

NAR’s speech code was prompted by a spike in reports this year of Realtors posting racist and homophobic comments on social media, causing a huge embarrassment to the organization and frustration that the group was powerless to discipline its members.

The examples Difanis cited offer some clues as to what could be considered hate speech. That includes one Realtor’s post: “I think black people bring out the worst in us.” And another post: “We always knew black people were violent – they are not Christian.”

Realtors also used the N-word and other epithets, which Difanis repeated in the video. In one case, a Realtor waved an assault rifle on camera saying he was eager to shoot looters and protesters.

Difanis, whose Illinois brokerage firm employs about 60 Realtors, said he has fired two agents this year, one for making “racially insensitive comments on social media” and the other for making “an outright racist slur in a comment thread on a public figure page.” Both agents had no trouble finding work with other brokers.

“There's nothing that prevents them from being picked right back up, reaffiliating and staying in the marketplace with no actual sanctions,” Difanis said.

Difanis described the process of evaluating ethics complaints as “making judgment calls within procedural guardrails,” to be undertaken by hundreds of local panels, usually comprising three or five Realtors.

“We can’t give you the ‘Here’s the words you can’t say or use, and if it’s one of these words they’re in violation, and if it’s not it’s not,’” Difanis said. “It doesn’t work that way.”

And this uncertainty is that causes angst in the profession and beyond.

"We live in an era where there's a lot of witch hunts going on," said Rebecca D'Angelo, a white Realtor in Richmond who doesn't oppose NAR's new policy. "There's a lot to keep up with these days on who you're offending."

Email: jmurawski@realclearinvestigations.com

Twitter: @johnmurawski

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Investigations.]

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